This study examined the research productivity of academic staff of Nigerian universities. Research productivity was measured using Google Scholar h-index and i10-index. Effect-to-Cause Causal-Comparative Ex Post Facto Design was adopted. A sample of 1073, composed of 713, 266 and 94 staff of Federal, State and Private Universities with School of Graduate Studies in the South-South geopolitical region. Six research questions and null hypotheses were respectively answered and tested. One-way ANOVA and independent samples t-test were used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Findings showed no statistically significant difference between the research productivity of Federal, State and Private Universities: (h-index, F (2, 1072) = 2.853, P>0.05; and i10-index, F (2, 1072) = 2.288, P>0.05). The findings interestingly revealed statistically significant difference in h-index: F (8, 1064) = 40.666, P < 0.05; and i10-index: F (8, 1064) = 22.321, P < 0.05 between the nine faculties (areas of specialization). The research productivity of staff in Faculties of Health Science, Natural/Applied Sciences, and Agriculture is overwhelmingly (significantly) greater than those of staff in Faculties of Law, Humanities, Education, Social Sciences, Management Sciences, and Engineering. The study exposed that female academics are less productive in research in comparison with their male counterparts. It recommended frequent adoption of the two productivity measures (h-index and i10-index) as well as numerous publication of research works online to boost research productivity of staff in the universities.
Keywords: Research productivity; h-index; i10-index; academic staff; Nigerian universities; Faculties; Google Scholar; Effect-to-cause causal-comparative ex-post facto design; Federal, state and private universities
